Since one of the files was in Notepad, I did a search for any pattern that looked like a command and came up empty. But you're right, it's my interpretation that is leading to the confusion, as I suspected. I'm quite familiar with Motorola S-records but not Intel.

In the Wiki you provided there is this statement: "Beware! While addresses are always given as big endian byte addresses, it's unspecified how to interpret the data bytes. Whether they are taken as bytes, 16- or 32 bit little- or big endian words is application specific."

So what is PBP? big or small endian? bytes? words?

-Can you break down and maybe highlight one or two commands that are "the same" so I can get my head around this? (I don't need to know this for any particular reason except that I MUST know it).

-What is the "memory" referred to in the MeLabs programmer popup? Is it program memory IN THE CHIP or is it some kind of buffer memory stored in PBP session, or is it a hex file located on the windows disk?